Foreign aid and energy poverty: Sub-national evidence from Senegal

We contribute to the literature on foreign aid effectiveness and energy poverty by examining the effect of foreign aid on energy poverty. Using five rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and sub-national aid data for Senegal, we find that aid lowers the probability of energy poverty. Our main results show that living within a 25-km radius of an aid project reduces the likelihood of being energy poor by 3.3 percentage points. This finding is robust to a suite of sensitivity checks. We also examine four channels through which aid could influence energy poverty - income poverty, education, health and economic growth - and find that income poverty, education and economic growth are mechanisms through which aid transmits to energy poverty.